


Effanineffable

by audiaphilios



Series: From Tumblr With Lo-- [30]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic), Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats - T. S. Eliot
Genre: Bad Parenting, Bigotry & Prejudice, Character Study, Gen, Literature, entitlement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 23:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9407669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audiaphilios/pseuds/audiaphilios
Summary: It’s the summer before he starts at Andover, and his parents are arguing about custody.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous asked:  
> I was reading some of Bitty's old tweets, and one of the first mentions him wondering if Shitty's dad even knows his first name, and how he talked about their relationship with a lot of swearing... There's the hcs of Shitty getting his nickname because he says his name is Shitty or whatever else and people just go with it... But what if it has something do to with his dad calling him shitty? What if he had just gotten off the phone after a fight and was bitter when he said it was his name?
> 
> My response:  
> I AM ACTUALLY AND TERRIBLY SADLY SO HERE FOR THIS. Like, I honestly feel like his relationship with his father involves a lot more swearing than we want to think about– and now you’re making me think that maybe, in fact, his father called him “a shitty Knight” in an argument with his mom before/during the divorce.
> 
> [Originally posted to tumblr on August 20, 2016.](http://audiaphilios.tumblr.com/post/149198916790/i-was-reading-some-of-bittys-old-tweets-and-one)

It’s the summer before he starts at Andover, and his parents are arguing about custody. Fourteen-year-old Ben (-jamin Stuyvesant Knight, V) is trying to drown out their shouting with his headphones, because he’s already told his mom he wants to stay with her, and he loves and trusts her enough to fight for him. But he still can hear his father raging about how she can keep the little fairy asshole, he’s a shitty Knight anyway, before slamming out of the house.

And his mom has taught him many things growing up in that household, the household that he won’t have to be in much longer--  _Nolite te bastardes carborundorum_ , he learned from Margaret Atwood.  _That which does not kill us makes us stronger_ , he learned from Friedrich Nietzsche.  _Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one,_ he learned from Sandra Cisneros.

He thinks about that last one, now, and how his mom explained it’s okay to feel all your younger selves rattling around inside you, and how each year the things you learn stick with you to make the  _you_  you become. 

He learned from T.S. Eliot about the power of names,

> _The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,_  
>  It isn't just one of your holiday games;  
>  You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter  
>  When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. 

knows that power is not just what his father’s family thinks, the “honor and privilege” of being the Fifth,  _Quint_ , his grandparents call him. There’s a power in the names you give things without thinking, and he knows with a sudden certainty

> But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,  
>  A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,  
>  Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,  
>  Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride? 

that being “a shitty Knight” is not an insult at all. He thinks about his father’s family, how they treat his mom, who’s the smartest person he’s ever met, how they talk about them both in language coded as well as frank. He thinks his father may have just paid him the biggest compliment he’s ever received, as regards THAT side of his family tree. He knows with sudden certainty that there is little that will make his father angrier than claiming the name he’s just been given.

After all, that’s probably the clearest his father has ever seen him, with that name. And Ben knows that there is so much more to himself than his father will ever get to see, or know. He’s so much vaster than his father ever cared 

> But above and beyond there's still one name left over,  
>  And that is the name that you never will guess;  
>  The name that no human research can discover--  
>  But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess. 

and he and his mom will be just fine.  ~~Ben~~ Shitty sleeps well that night, knowing how much brighter and different the world will be when he wakes up. He and his mom will have so much to learn together, and explore, and discover. He has so many more years to grow into, to become the person he gets to be, in addition to all the versions of himself he’s been so far.

> When you notice a cat in profound meditation,  
>  The reason, I tell you, is always the same:  
>  His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation  
>  Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:  
>  His ineffable effable  
>  Effanineffable  
>  Deep and inscrutable singular Name. 


End file.
